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A defiant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday dismissed the United Nations Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program as "a piece of torn paper" that would not deter Iran from its nuclear activities. "It is a piece of torn paper... by which they aim to scare Iranians... It is in the Westerners' interests to live with a nuclear Iran," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted him as saying. In his first response since the 15-member Council voted unanimously Saturday to impose economic sanctions, the hard-line Iranian president said that the supporters of the resolution would soon regret...

The US media still largely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, “this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year.” As a result, most American’s are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East. In fact they were one of the first countries to have spontaneous candlelight vigils after the 911 tragedy (see photo). There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in...

TEHRAN, March 23--A top US expert on the Middle East said that the sanctions against Iran do not affect the Islamic Republic's oil and gas export to other countries. Speaking to Alalam Sunday, Kenneth Katzman, a specialist in Middle East affairs for the Congressional Research Service, said the recent gas export deal between Iran and Switzerland was a blow to US efforts to impose sanctions on Iran. The US official noted though the US sanctions against the Islamic Republic include the energy sector, new investments in the fields of research, excavation and extraction of oil and gas, it does not...

The United States says it has imposed sanctions against 13 foreign companies that have sold equipment or technology to Iran that could be used for making nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. A State Department spokesman said the sanctions mean the companies will not receive any business or assistance from the US government, and that US companies are banned from dealing with them for two years. The companies are based in China, Macedonia, Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates. The spokesman said that sanctions against a number of Russian companies and institutes had been lifted as they...

PRINCETON, N.J. - Sen. Hillary Clinton called for United Nations sanctions against Iran as it resumes its nuclear program and faulted the Bush administration for "downplaying" the threat. In an address Wednesday evening at Princeton University, Clinton, D-N.Y., said it was a mistake for the U.S. to have Britain, France and Germany head up nuclear talks with Iran over the past 2 1/2 years. Last week, Iran resumed nuclear research in a move Tehran claims is for energy, not weapons. "I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats...

Iran faces a dilemma. It can neither fully accept nor reject the package of incentives offered by Germany and the United Nations Security Council's permanent five (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China), irrespective of the growing international pressure, the UN's deadline of August 31 and the threat of international sanctions.

<p>MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) - Campaigning in New Hampshire today, Republican Ron Paul says he would lift sanctions on Iran and order the U.S. Navy to pull back from its shores.</p> <p>Paul says if the U.S. relieved pressure on Iran, people would breathe a sign of relief, interest rates probably would not go up and oil prices probably would drop.</p>

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 23 -- The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to restrict Iran's trade in sensitive nuclear materials and to freeze the assets of 22 Iranian officials and institutions linked to the country's most controversial nuclear programs. The council's action culminated more than three years of diplomatic efforts by the United States to have Iran sanctioned for expanding its enrichment of uranium. But Russia, a close commercial partner of Iran, stripped the resolution of some of its toughest measures, including a travel ban on officials linked to the nuclear programs. The resolution demands that Iran immediately suspend its...

Video at Link WASHINGTON, D.C. –Ridiculing the idea of negotiating with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a “spectacle” that would embolden extremists, McCain jabbed Obama on Iran and Iraq before more than 7,500 members of the highly influential pro-Israel lobbyist group.“We hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before,” McCain told AIPAC members, adding that Obama is engaging in a “serious misreading of history.”“It’s hard to see what such a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an...

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian and China indicated that they will not support a draft U.N. resolution imposing tough sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt its nuclear enrichment program. The comments by Russia's foreign minister and China's U.N. ambassador were the strongest reactions yet to the draft by the two key U.N. Security Council members, and signaled difficult negotiations ahead on the resolution drawn up by Britain, France and Germany. "We cannot support measures that in essence are aimed at isolating Iran from the outside world, including isolating people who are called upon to conduct negotiations on the nuclear...

BERLIN, March 30 — A day after the United Nations Security Council approved a heavily compromised statement criticizing the Iranian nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today raised the idea of imposing sanctions on Iran for the first time with the permament members of the council but received a decidedly cool reaction from China and Russia. During a news conference after a three and one-half hour meeting here today, Dai Bingguo, China's vice minister of foreign affairs, rejected the idea of sanctions and offered a thinly veiled criticism of the war in Iraq when he said, "The Chinese side...

OK, Let me just tell you something here I spent about 5 minutes looking through Charles Duelfer’s Report this execerpt is from part 1, i'm NOT a laywer NOT even close! Why is Kerry lying to the people? Sheesh just read this and you decide if the sanctions were working... 1996 Beginning of Oil-for-Food. Another example of a key infl ection point was the 1996 decision to accept the Oil-for-Food (OFF) program. Internally, Iraq was in trouble. The economy was in tatters. The middle class was decimated by the collapse of the dinar and the impact of sanctions. The hobbling...

If speculation about President Obama’s likely nominees to head the departments of State and Defense proves correct, the next four years could see a renewed focus on his early drive to engage with hostile and repressive regimes. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), tapped to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, and former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebr.), viewed a strong contender for the Pentagon, both have a record of favoring engagement over isolation and sanctions when dealing with such governments. The liberal Democrat and moderate Republican, both decorated Vietnam War veterans regarded as foreign policy experts, have called over a number...

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran has dismissed a warning by US President George W. Bush of stronger sanctions if Tehran does not bow to international demands over its nuclear program. ADVERTISEMENT "Bush's language is not acceptable and does not fit in with our cooperation with Europe," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying Wednesday by the official IRNA news agency. On Monday, Bush turned up the pressure on Tehran, warning of "progressively stronger political and economic sanctions" if it refuses to freeze sensitive nuclear activities in return for talks. Bush signaled that suspending uranium enrichment and reprocessing was...

Among Sen. John Kerry's top fund-raisers are three Iranian-Americans who have been pushing for dramatic changes in U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran. Most prominent among them is Hassan Nemazee, 54, an investment banker based in New York. Nominated to become U.S. ambassador to Argentina by President Bill Clinton in 1999, Nemazee eventually withdrew his nomination after a former partner raised allegations of business improprieties. Nemazee was a major Clinton donor, giving $80,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 1996 election cycle and attending at least one of the famous White House fund-raising coffees.

The London Financial Times reports that, according to "unnamed diplomats and a Kerry adviser," top EU officials from Germany and the Netherlands are lobbying the Bush Administration to adopt John Kerry's position on Iran and its nuclear program. High-level meetings were held with both the White House and the Kerry campaign last week. The European proposal offers Iran a guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel for its civilian reactors with all waste products to be returned and closely monitored. Iran would pledge to end development of its own enrichment plants that could be used to make nuclear weapons. According to the...

“The clock is ticking,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Iran on Friday, adding that Israel will do what is necessary to defend itself against the Islamic Republic's nuclear program. Speaking to reporters at a joint news conference with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, Kerry said that he is not optimistic that Iran's upcoming presidential election will result in any change in the country's nuclear ambitions. "I do not have high expectations that the election is going to change the fundamental calculus of Iran," Kerry said. "This is not a portfolio that is in the hands of a new...

US senator meets PM, says US, Israel "talking from the same page" on Iran. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who for the last two weeks has loudly been calling for sanctions on Iran’s energy sector, received strong backing Monday when visiting US Sen. John Kerry supported the move. Kerry, the powerful head of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, said he “absolutely” supported sanctions against Iran’s energy industry. “I believe that the most biting and important sanctions would be those on the energy side,” Kerry told a press conference, after meeting Netanyahu. The senator said there were other sanctions that should be...

For years the Obama line was that sanctions were the answer to get Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program. Now even sanctions aren’t the answer. Instead sanctions might upset the delicate flower of Iranian diplomacy. And Hanoi John, a veteran of unsuccessful appeasements of the Viet Cong and the Sandanistas, who embraced monsters like Assad, is an absolute expert at not offending the people trying to kill us. Secretary of State John F. Kerry implored Congress on Thursday not to impose tough new sanctions on Iran, warning that such a move could disrupt diplomacy over Tehran’s disputed nuclear...

His name's been kicking around for more than a week but the "likely" part is new. BREAKING: Former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel likely to be nominated as Secretary of Defense— Bloomberg News (@BloombergNews) December 13, 2012 NBC is hearing the same thing. Team O has been touting him for appointments since before The One was president, when Hagel was briefly rumored to be in the mix for VP. His name popped up again two years later as a potential successor to Dennis Blair as DNI. He's sort of the perfect Obama appointee: He's a centrist Republican, which burnishes O's phony...